father-bother merger

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌfɑːðə ˈbɒðə ˈmɜːdʒə(ɹ)/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌfɑðɚ ˈbɑðɚ ˈmɝdʒɚ/

Noun

father-bother merger

1. A phonemic merger in English of the vowels /ɑː/ (as in father) and /ɒ/ (as in bother).
   • 2018, Gregory H. Bontrager, “Ambisyllabicity in an Optimal-Theoretic Model of English Stress Assignment”, in Florida Linguistics Papers, volume 5, number 2:

     The first is the father-bother merger, a loss of rounding contrast in the low back vowels by which the originally contrastive /ɒ/ has been subsumed by /ɑː/ into the fused phoneme /ɑ/.

See also

• cot-caught merger